Circle Dream
by Zubeneschamali
Summary: An AU interpretation of a scene late in 'Hot Shot' after Don is attacked, from Charlie's POV. Don't tell me this thought didn't occur to you, too…


Title: Circle Dream  
Author: Zubeneschamali  
Rating: K+  
Category: AU

Summary: An AU interpretation of a scene late in "Hot Shot," after Don is attacked. Don't tell me this thought didn't occur to you, too…

Disclaimer: Title taken from 10,000 Maniacs. Characters and some of the dialogue taken from CBS and Scott Free Productions. Don't own them, make no money off them, not mine. Sadly.

Author's note: I don't usually write stories of this nature, but this little plot bunny sank its fangs into my ankle and wouldn't let go. Thanks to rittenden for a quick beta read. Oh, and this is definitely a one-shot. So don't even ask.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Charlie pushed aside the door to the dining room. Head down, he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to clear his thoughts. He was often disoriented and groggy when he awoke from an unplanned nap, but this time it was compounded by the "conversation" he had had with his mother. After feeling her hand touch his face, he had settled back into a deeper, dreamless sleep for what seemed like hours. According to his watch, though, the whole episode had only taken 45 minutes.

He couldn't stop thinking about what she had said, about him being like his father and Don being more like her. He had to disagree: Don had always seemed perfectly confident in his life choices, from choosing a college, to playing minor-league ball, to suddenly and decisively taking a completely different path that in the end seemed to fit him as well as mathematics fit Charlie.

His train of thought was derailed when he saw the object of his thoughts sitting at the dining room table. Don's head was bent over a pile of papers, a pen in his hand. He froze in the doorway, almost thinking for a moment that this was another apparition. Wasn't Don supposed to be out chasing down a suspect tonight?

"Hey, I didn't know you were here." Don's voice cut into his thoughts.

Charlie came over and put his arm across his brother's back, meeting some tangible reassurance after the otherworldly experience he'd just had in the garage. Quietly, he said, "Yeah, I guess I dozed off back there."

"You got the good life, huh?" Don replied a little wistfully.

He was going to brush the comment aside and ask Don what he was working on, but the words came out before he could stop them. "Actually, it was another dream about Mom."

"Oh yeah?" Don put his pen down and looked up at him. "What did she have to say?"

He shook his head. "Just stuff." It was too embarrassing to admit that the one question he truly wanted to ask her was not about him, but about his brother. He pulled back and rested both hands on the back of the chair.

Don was watching him closely. "You all right?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. How about you?"

Don quickly looked away. "She, uh, she didn't say anything about me, did she?"

"Only good things. You know her," Charlie said in a teasing tone. Then he stopped short. Don looked unaccountably serious. "What is it?"

Don pursed his lips. "Not sure how to say this." He paused, and then went on, "See, the thing is, I just talked to her, too."

He blinked. "What, you fell asleep at the table here?" In a way, he was relieved. He had been feeling a little bit strange about these dreams that were more realistic than the dreams he usually had, even after his father had mentioned he had had a similar experience. Somehow, if Don was experiencing the same thing, that made it more okay.

Don was fiddling with the label on his beer bottle. "Something like that." His voice sounded surprisingly heavy.

"What, uh, what did she say to you?" Charlie tightened his grip on the back of the chair. "I mean, if you feel like talking about it, that is."

Don looked up at him for a long moment, searching his face. Charlie tried to look as supportive and encouraging as possible, trying to counterbalance the increasingly somber expression on his brother's face. Finally, Don said softly, "I'm sorry, buddy."

He cocked his head to the side. "Sorry about what?"

Don gave a long sigh and turned his attention back to the label he was peeling off the bottle. His voice was low, and the non sequitur caught Charlie off-guard. "We were so sure he was going to meet his mother. Megan said it fit his profile, the mother said they were supposed to meet, and it all seemed to fit. And three on one is better odds than two on one, right?" He made a gesture with his hand, elegant fingers extended, then curling back together as his hand fell to the tabletop. "Certainly better than one on one."

Charlie slowly pulled the chair away from the table. "What happened, Don?" he asked quietly.

His brother was silent for a moment, lower lip tucked between his teeth as if he were thinking about how to solve a problem. Then he said just as quietly, "I was stupid. I mean, God, how dumb can you get, walking in alone when you know the suspect's there, when you know he sent someone else out to throw you off the track and that it worked." He paused. "Next time, Eppes, wait for backup." Then he snorted and shook his head.

"Are you okay?" He didn't look like he'd been injured, and surely he wouldn't have come straight to the house if something had gone wrong apprehending their suspect. On the other hand, no one had called here looking for him, so it wasn't like he'd run off. Not that Don would do something like that. In a more deliberate tone of voice, leaning forward and putting his hand on his brother's forearm, he asked, "Don, are you okay?"

The expression in Don's eyes when he looked up was a complicated mixture of sorrow and guilt that made Charlie's heart skip a beat. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I would give anything to be able to undo the last few hours, but…" He shook his head. "There's nothing I can do, buddy."

A cold fear began to work its way up Charlie's spine. "What exactly are you saying?" His hand clenched tighter around his arm, feeling the reassurance of warm skin underneath his fingers.

"He got me from behind," Don said quietly, looking past Charlie's shoulder and across the room. "Flashed a light in my eyes, broke something over my head, knocked the gun out of my hand. Then he stuck something in my neck. I knew what it was, but by the time I could get my body to respond like it was supposed to..." He trailed off. "I've never felt so damn helpless."

"Then what are you doing here?" Charlie's voice took on a new urgency. "If you were injured, shouldn't you be at the hospital? And if you caught the guy, shouldn't you be giving a statement at your office? Why are you here?"

"You always have to know all the answers, don't you?" The sorrow in Don's eyes was still there, but there was another emotion behind it now, present in his voice as well as his face. If Charlie had to put a name to it, he would call it love, the kind of unbridled affection that the two brothers never expressed to each other so explicitly. They joked around and watched out for each other, now more than they ever had when they were younger, but they still never came out in the open with their emotions. He couldn't help but wonder what had brought this on.

Suddenly he remembered a particularly bitter comment his father had made many years ago, after Don joined the FBI and the two of them were on the outs with each other after a screaming match over the Thanksgiving dinner table. Alan had said that at this rate, the only way the two brothers would reconcile with each other was at one of their deathbeds, and unless Charlie contracted some kind of fatal disease from breathing chalk dust, it was obvious whose bed it was going to be.

He knew the dawning, terrifying recognition must be visible on his face, because Don was giving a slow nod. "I'm sorry," he whispered again, sliding his arm along the table to clasp Charlie's hand in his own.

Don's hand didn't feel any less solid than it had a moment ago. But then, his mother had felt all too tangible herself, standing in the garage a few minutes ago, her hand on his cheek. "No," he whispered, not daring to acknowledge the horrible truth that was slowly but inexorably occurring to him. "No, you're wrong."

Don's hand tightened on his. "Listen, I know this is going to be hard. But you and Dad can do it, okay? You have each other. Promise me that you'll look out for him, 'cause he's gonna need you. No P vs. P stuff, okay?"

He was shaking his head back and forth, first slowly, and then more and more violently. "No, Don. No. This is just another one of my dreams. First it was Dad, then Mom, and now you. I mean, it's only logical, if it's abandonment that I'm worrying about, that I should make the rounds of the whole family, right?" He pulled his hand away and started gesticulating in the air. "I went and talked to Megan, and she thinks that's what the first dream meant. And so this is just another variation on the same theme. You know." He paused, hands frozen in mid-air. "So if I go back to my calculations, with a new column of data—"

"Charlie, listen to me." Don reached out and grabbed both of his hands, pulling his attention away from the chalkboard in his head. "Did you ever think that these dreams of yours might be about preparing you for something? That figuring out how to deal with…with loss in your dreams would help you do it in real life? That having the opportunity to work through things that aren't real would make it easier when those things really happen?"

"But those things haven't actually happened," he protested. "Dad didn't get shot in a grocery store robbery. And Mom…well, that was a long time ago, and it's over. And you're not…" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"Look, I admit was a little jealous at first when you told me you'd had such a realistic dream about Mom. I mean, I've dreamed about her a lot, yeah, but nothing that seemed as real as what you described. And then Dad said he did, too, and I started to wonder what was wrong with me. Why don't I get to see her?" Then he shook his head and lowered his gaze to the tabletop. "Now I wish I hadn't."

"What do you—" Charlie broke off, and his stomach dropped.

They weren't alone. Margaret Eppes was standing behind Don, her hands on his shoulders, looking down at him. "Mom." His voice wobbled. "What's going on?"

She and Don faced him with the same sad, knowing expression, and that's when it finally sank in. "No," he said firmly, pushing the chair away from the table and standing up. "No, this isn't real. I'm—I'm going to wake up now."

"I know you are, Charlie. And your brother's right, it's going to be hard." She came forward and laid a soft hand on his cheek, her perfume wafting past his nostrils. "Just be strong when you do, okay?"

Puzzled, he looked at Don, who softly said, "Love you, buddy."

"But what—"

"Charlie!" Alan's voice was coming from a distance.

He blinked to clear his vision against the tears that had suddenly appeared in his eyes, blurring the two figures before him.

Then "Charlie!" came more insistently, and closer.

Suddenly he jerked awake, blinking in confusion. He was laying on the couch, feet propped on the armrest, and Alan was shaking his arm. "Dad, what is it?" He shook his head to clear it. "I must have fallen asleep. What time is it?"

"Charlie." Alan's voice was heavy with an emotional weight he hadn't heard in years, and he froze. "Charlie, Megan Reeves just called. Don was…he was injured trying to catch a suspect. He's at UCLA Hospital."

He slowly sat up and lifted his eyes to meet his father's, feeling as if the entire universe had stopped rotating for a moment. "How bad?" he asked quietly.

Alan moistened his lips, but seemed to take a moment to find the words. "She—she didn't go into a lot of detail, but she did say we should hurry."

His heart stopped again. "No," he whispered. Then his head whipped around as he looked frantically towards the dining room. He didn't know whether it was a good thing or not to see it empty.

Just because you dreamed about a dead person didn't mean everyone in that same dream was dead, too. Did it?

"Charlie, do you understand? We need to go."

He turned back to his father, and he could see in his eyes that he was just barely holding it together. His father needed him. Don had been right. He forced back the small, screaming voice that said Don couldn't possibly have been right, that he had to be wrong about everything he had said, especially…

Then his mother's words came back to him, and what his brother had said before that, and he straightened his shoulders. Yes, he had to know the answer to every question he came across. He had always been like that. And right now, the only way to find that answer was to be strong.

After all, there was no reason to think that it was anything but a dream.

"I'm ready, Dad," he said as firmly as he could as he rose to his feet and laid a supportive hand on his father's back. "Let's go see Don."


End file.
